Text Size

-

+

reset

The courtship came in the depths of the Depression and at the dawn of the New Deal. Reading the letters highlights how much has changed in 79 years. He could not hop on a plane to go see her. Long-distance telephone calls were expensive and rare. At one point, for instance, Johnson sent a complaint to Lady Bird that she had not written him — only to receive a letter from her just one hour later.

But there’s something timeless about the exchanges, as anyone who has ever fallen in love or tried to make a long-distance relationship work can attest.

“Hurry and send me the Kodak pictures,” he prods in one letter. “Then I’ll have something to thrill me in addition to waiting for the postman.”

She responded to the request for pictures by explaining that she has “an awful inferiority complex” about them not turning out well.

“I’d always about as soon meet the firing squad at dawn as sit down in front of that black hooded thing and grimace for a half hour or so,” she explained.

A few weeks after he first asked, she put on a “little cotton dress” that she thought he would like and had her picture taken.

Johnson called her “Bird.” It was a nickname that stuck with her through life, including as First Lady. Her real name was Claudia Alta Taylor.

He sent her books to read, including one about Nazism, but he added that he hoped the reading material would not distract her from writing him letters on what she was up to every day.

She fell hard for him as the weeks passed, but she expressed doubts about getting married until they knew each other better.

She was alarmed when he spoke of their relationship in the past tense in part of one exchange.

On Oct. 17, she wrote: “we must wait…until there isn’t any doubt — until we’re sure we’ve [got] a solid foundation to build on.”

But, less than three weeks later, Johnson went to Texas to meet her father and give her a ring.

Even then, she wrote about getting headaches listening to cousins and aunts tell her that, “if he loves you he’ll wait for you.”

By then, she had decided to go ahead with a quick wedding.

“Dad said he would have liked to talk to you some more,” she wrote immediately after his trip down to Texas. “He thinks you are fine, Lyndon … And he thinks you are going far, and that you love me, and that you’ll be good to me. But even he is a little grave about it being so soon.”